Bill McDermott bought a delicatessen at age 16 for 5,500 dollars, rising to 7,000 with interest, paid through a note to the seller.
“I bought the business for 5,500 notes, 7,000 with interest. If I make the payments, I keep it.”
Person
Bill McDermott
1 episodes · 21 quoted claims
The deli McDermott bought was only a one-year lease on property owned by Sunmark Industries, which operated a Sunoco gas station.
“It was only a one year lease, you never owned the land or the building, so he was selling a one year lease.”
McDermott says serving about 500 customers a day at his deli built his emotional intelligence.
“the EQ that comes with dealing with 500 customers a day is worth a lot”
McDermott compares Xerox at the time he joined to Google today as the leading company of its era.
“Xerox back then was the Google of its era.”
Before his Xerox interview, McDermott read an annual report about CEO David Kearns reinventing the company.
“I was reading the annual report on how that CEO, David Kearns was his name, was reinventing this corporation.”
McDermott says that when he joined Xerox, most of the world's most valuable companies were Japanese and sold higher-quality products at lower prices.
“most of the most valuable companies in the world were from Japan”
Emerson Fullwood, the Xerox executive who hired McDermott, asked him to speak at the Rochester Institute of Technology 25 years later.
“25 years later, Emerson Fullwood asked me to give a speech at the Rochester Institute of Technology to students.”
McDermott said cybercrime would rank as the world's third-largest economy after the US and China, at roughly 1 trillion dollars a month.
“is the world's largest economy, China's number two and cybercrime is number three. It's 1 trillion dollar a month problem.”
ServiceNow is bringing Armis, a company covering operating technology such as networked devices and industrial equipment, into its platform.
“OT, which is the operating technology with Armis now becoming a part of ServiceNow.”
ServiceNow has acquired Moveworks, described as an agentic front door to the enterprise, and an identity security company the transcript renders as Vesa.
“you've seen what we did with MoveWorks, the agentic front door to the enterprise, and Vesa, which is human and non human identity.”
McDermott said ServiceNow integrated its recent acquisitions in 20 days.
“we integrated these businesses in 20 days, 20 days.”
McDermott said ServiceNow had more than 85 billion workflows in flight and 7 trillion transactions on its platform.
“I believe the last time I looked at it was more than 85 billion workflows are in flight as we're having this podcast. And we got 7 trillion transactions happening on that platform”
McDermott said roughly 800 substantial systems of record integrate with the ServiceNow platform.
“So now you have roughly 800 of the more substantial systems of record that integrate into it.”
McDermott said ServiceNow can work with data held elsewhere through a zero copy approach, so the data is not moved.
“oh, we make a zero copy and then the transaction is complete, done and dusted, nothing moved.”
McDermott said large ServiceNow customers are going live in under 30 days.
“we have major customers, big ones that are going live in less than 30 days, big ones.”
McDermott said about 90 percent of ServiceNow's customer service cases are handled by AI agents, leaving about 10 percent for people.
“you know, 90 of our customer service cases now are managed by agents. And you know that that means, like, only ten are actually involving people.”
McDermott predicted about 2 billion AI agents would enter the workforce within a couple of years.
“there'll be two, 2 billion of these agents entering the workforce in the next couple of years.”
McDermott said only about eleven percent of the Brazilian companies at a meeting he attended had moved past AI experiments.
“only eleven of the companies since that was last night's meeting, have actually gotten past the experiment phase, where they're doing experiments.”
McDermott said many companies hired heavily during Covid, often through virtual interviews, and are now trying to get leaner with AI.
“if you look at the years 2020 to th 2024, they hired a lot through Covid”
McDermott said he began one day with conversations with seventeen quota-carrying sales reps and has seventy-two such conversations scheduled in the month.
“for example, yesterday, I started my day with seventeen conversations with seventeen quota-carrying reps”
McDermott cites a Robert Kennedy quotation about dreaming of things that never were, which he put in his book.
“when the great Robert Kennedy once said, You know, some men see things as they are and say, why?”